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Battle Lines Being Drawn As Obama Plans To Curb Tax Avoidance
theodp writes "Barack Obama has squared up for a major battle with big business, announcing a crackdown on offshore tax avoidance and evasion by US multinationals that's designed to raise $210B and make it easier for companies to create 'good jobs here at home'. Obama cited a building in the Cayman Islands where more than 18,000 US companies are housed: 'Either this is the biggest building in the world or it is the biggest tax scam in the world,' he said. 'I think the American people know which it is.' The administration says that more than a third of US foreign profits in 2003 came from Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland, and noted US companies paid an effective tax rate of just 2.3% on the $700bn they earned in foreign profits in 2004. Among tech companies affected by the crackdown, Microsoft joined 200 companies who signed a letter complaining that the proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals, Cisco moaned that the measures 'would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the US,' and Google declined to comment for the time being."
Its a building of holding... Duh.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
two ways to solve the tax "scam"
1. raise overseas tax
2. lower domestic tax
guess which road the government takes.
What does he think is going to happen? These evil rich businessmen are going to go out and deliver pizzas in their free time to pay the extra taxes? Corporate taxes are exactly the same as raising income tax, except you are paying at the point of purchase rather then the point of earning. The only real point of corporate taxes is to give the government the ability to punish companies that fall out of favor.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Not my free market! Take your hands off my free market Nobama!
Oops we're bankrupt, give us money Mr. President :(
Am I cynical to think that these businesses will just raise the cost of their goods to cover the additional tax, thus making consumers the ones to pick up this $210 billion tab? I somehow doubt that publicly traded companies are excited to see the earnings hit show up in their quarterly statements.
For starters, maybe if corporations started paying their taxes, we could take down the debt some, or maybe we could lower taxes on the rest of us. I don't feel bad for the corporations, maybe they'll just have to forgo paying their executives their excessively huge salaries.
Also, every time Obama does something wrong, we see a bunch of people making sarcastic comments here on how Obama represents "change we can believe in". I do not agree with everything he has done, but I do like to see this sort of thing, he seems like he is honestly trying to run the government in a fiscally responsible way. That's a big difference from our previous president who refused to cut spending to pay for his tax cuts, and even refused to allow the cost of his several hundred billion dollar unnecessary war to be included in the normal budget. We're all paying for that kind of "limited government" now, as will be our children and grandchildren.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
And of course we can expect this to work flawlessly, and won't make businesses avoid the US, just like other great laws such as SOX.
How about lowering taxes and making the tax code simpler, so theres not all these loopholes and thus no reason to have the offshort accounts.
Complicated tax codes create the loopholes that allow this to happen, and this legislation will only make more of them.
It is not the case that "usually" lowing taxes increases revenue. It hasn't seemed to work too well for the last several rounds of tax cuts. Certainly there is a point where lowering taxes reduces total revenue. That point is a tax rate somewhere between 0 and 100%; where? That's up for debate.
Many economists would argue we passed that point some time ago.
SirWired
This is more or less what's happenning to the USA as a whole. American companies simply cannot compete against foreign companies, that's why the industrial sector is moving to Asia. It's useless to say "stop trying to make a profit and die", they died a quarter century ago.
It's the US government at all levels, federal, state, and local, that should learn to live by the rules. When the corporations are moving overseas to places with lower taxes this means your taxes are too high, you should cut government spending and taxes at the same time.
Why blame Ballmer and Microsoft?
Ireland offers these companies a way to pay less in tax. You really expect them to not take it?
Ireland sees it as a way to increase their income so they do it. If you want to blame anybody then blame Ireland and or the EU in general.
Hey I am not a fan of Microsoft but in this case the blame seems really misplaces.
Of course you could just stop buying Windows.
You have Linux, BSD, and even Solaris now to choose from and build a local software industry around or you can keep buying Windows and pumping money out of your country. Windows is probably the path of least resistance... Kind of like going through Ireland for software sales.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Congratulations on missing the point congress. (surprise)
Forbes had a great piece on this a few months ago. People aren't going to Ireland / the Caymans because they don't want to pay taxes and just want to cheat... the cost of compliance is too high.
One of the good things Regan was supposed to have done was get lots of tax money back to the US by simplifying our tax code. Even though they may have brought their money back from countries with lower tax burdens, it was easier to have it in the US.
There is an opportunity cost to moving your money to another country or using a tax shelter (legal or not). People judge it worth it because of what they have to go through.
If you simply simplify the tax code so it's not so hard to deal with, people will come back. Things have only gotten worse recently with SarbOx. Closing loopholes is trying to tie the arms of suicidal people to beds. It works much better to try to get them to stop being suicidal.
There will always be people who try to cheat the system because they are immoral jerks. But if it doesn't take wealthy people a team of 30 tax attorneys to keep their wealth in line, they're more likely to keep it in the US and avoid the hassle of all the international laws (and spending 183 days of the year out of the country, and blah blah blah). No tax breaks for pork farmers on 17-35 acres in areas that don't observe daylight savings time unless they grow at least 3% barley ethanol using sustainable methods.
The problem is complexity in the tax code, not tax shelters.
Example way to fix things.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Most of those Bermuda/Cayman holding companies exist not to avoid taxes entirely, but rather to keep the US from double-taxing profits that have already been taxed once by Europe/Asia, which is what the US does when this offshore trick isn't used.
This is bogus argument. US has tax treaties with most of the rest of the world that prevent double taxation
It seems likely to me that if US companies can't do that any longer, many will cease to be US companies. It's not that hard to move HQ to Ireland or Canada or wherever. Then the US can become a nation of grunt workers while the real power and intellect (and taxable personal income) is abroad.
And where will they go exactly to find regulations and tax system that is more friendly to corporation than US? Canada? Really!?
EU is cracking on tax heavens too and Ireland will not enjoy it's special status much longer.
I block the Politics section for a reason
But Slashdot seems more and more obsessed with ramming the Politics section down everyone's throats.
First I had to block the Your Rights Online section because it morphed into Your Rights COMMA On-Line.
Then Science, because Slashdot turned it into a Creationists/Stem Cell debate section
Now, 3 stories in the last few weeks have leaked out of Politics (where they rightly belong) and on to the front page/News
Dear Self-Important Editors:
You (yeah you) created sections and the ability to block sections for a reason.
Maybe you should show some self-restraint and put you Damn Fucking soap boxes back in their proper sections.
I and many others have no desire to be subjected to stories, the main point of which seems to be running screeds on how "Jews control the GOP" or how "Ron Paul was right".
Your inability to observe the standards of conduct you yourself created shows an utter lack of class.
One: The Congressional Budget Office issued a report to that effect in 2005 (when the US federal government was entirely Republican-run). http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf
Two: Nobel prize laureate James Tobin, for another. In 1992 he wrote that "[t]he 'Laffer Curve' idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule with which sober economists had greeted it in 1981."
And three, economist Paul Pecorino calculated in 1995 that peak revenue was generated at a tax rate of around 65%, much higher than current tax rates in the US.
I dispute the premise that maximizing tax revenue is a legitimate function of government.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Corporations can pay taxes too. All I can say is "hello transactional tax" and hopefully (but not likely) goodbye to many other taxes. You can't dodge a transactional tax unless you cease doing business in a country. Considering this would ruin most companies, not having transactions in the US, it would remove any incentive to move headquarters overseas. In actuality every country is slowly going to move towards a transactional tax anyway to stop the, shall we say less than positive intimations (read: Blackmail), companies try to pull now. The funny thing is while the US has a higher tax rate, it has a lower collected rate than most countries.
The plus here is that corporations are the ones that are going to f*ck themselves over. You see they need, and I mean NEED, the government. Yes, the same ebil gubbermint they complain about. China isn't exactly a haven for Intellectual Property (i.e. rampant theft), other countries can't project power to defend the corporations various holdings, other countries lack the legal mechanisms for corporate defense, et al. That's why corporations raise the hew and cry often, but do very little but lobby.
The right keeps using the words "Socialist", "Marxist", and "Fascist" to describe Obama. Those words do not mean what they mean think they mean. I mean, really, Obama is a _______ (fill in the blank)? Obviously the right has ZERO idea of how center-right Obama really is. Heck, in any "Socialist" country, Obama would be seen as a right-winger. Fascist? Yeah, right, let me know what the previous President's wonderful record on the Bill of Rights was, in particular the 4th amendment. Marxist? Puh-lease, let me know when Obama pulls a Reagan and sends troops in somewhere over a labor dispute.
Just goes to show you what a lack of perspective nets people.
End all tax "credits" and "exemptions" (including EITC and Mortgage tax credits) and government handouts to corporations. After 5 years of paying off debt, lower the marginal rate. Remember, no exemptions at all. This would sting at first, in fact it would have to be phased in, but then the country would have a tax system that is as "fair" as taxes can be.
People say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Is there any shortage of bad ones?
Actually, wrong. It would lead to more jobs. Why? Let me explain.
Only large companies can afford large scale tax evasion. Because of that smaller local companies cannot compete with large companies (they cannot evade taxes) and go out of business. If large companies cannot evade taxes, smaller local companies suddenly become more competitive and that will actually create jobs.
Small and medium sized businesses are pretty much the backbone of the economy and provide most jobs by percentage, so rising their competitiveness is a very good idea.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Can you people possibly be this naive?
Funny, I was going to ask you the same question.
You act like corporations have no profit margins at all. As if every dollar they spend goes directly to labor and expenses.
It's quite simple. Profits from a corporation become the property of the shareholders. Either as retained earnings or dividends. Now, dividends are taxed at a flat 15%. Compare that to what you pay in taxes. If you owned the company, and could receive your pay in dividends, your total tax bill would be 15%.
The other option is to leave the money in the business as retained earnings or to spend it on assets. Want a new 20M aircraft? Instead of taking the money yourself and paying taxes on it before buying the plane, let the company buy the plane and book it as an asset. They get to depreciate it (150% right now thanks to bonus depreciation on aircraft) and not pay any tax on the money used to purchase it. (Simplification, but you get the general idea)
Corporate income tax exists as some kind of a counterbalance to this sort of behavior. It's intended to discourage principals from leaving most of what is really their profits in the company to avoid paying income tax on them. Now if the company is retaining earnings for a legitimate business purpose (saving for assets, rainy day, etc..) then they'll get the taxes back when they actually spend that money. (If they spend a lot, they can even back claim a net operating loss and get back money from previous years)
At the end of the day, this is all about making them accountable for the money they should pay tax on.
It also has NOTHING to do with employees or their ability to hire more. Employees are an expense. Money spent on employees is deductible. If anything, hiring more people would be a good way to AVOID paying the additional tax.
Again, for those of you that are really dense, or have drunk a lot of red koolaid:
CORPORATE INCOME TAX IS A TAX ON RETAINED EARNINGS. RE IS CALCULATED AFTER EMPLOYEE COSTS ARE REMOVED.
Don't let the pundits convince you that it's going to reduce employment. What it will do is force the super-high income bracket that derives most of their income from dividends to pay their fair share.
My effective tax rate was 38% last year, since my company doesn't make enough to pay me mostly through dividends. Most of my customers effective tax rates were less then 20%. On twice or more income, they pay about 5% total tax more then I did.
The usual slashdot meme is RTFA. In this case, read a fscking accounting book, or the 1041 instructions before you start spouting off about corporate income tax and what it does.
you pay taxes an all of your online purchases (assuming your state asks for it)?
Bottles.